Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Needed in Jerusalem: Cordobian Toleration

My readers know that I have pointed to a basic attitude of hypocrisy by Muslims in their campaign to deny Jews free access and the right of freedom of worship at the Temple Mount. They themselves demand the right to pray at a church which was originally a church but when Muslims conquered the country they turned that church into a mosque. When the native population reconquered their country back from the Muslim occupiers, the reconsecrated the church.In my opinion, this parallels the situation in Jerusalem.The Muslims know quite well that their structures are on the site of the former Jewish temples.What has happened there?Well, first of all, we are referring to Cordoba in Spain.

All the churches in that city [Cordoba] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent...when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not provide sufficient accommodation for the newcomers, and the Syrians considered it would be well for them to adopt the plan which had been carried out at Damascus, Emesa [Homs], and other towns in their own country, of appropriating half of the cathedral and using it as a mosque...This was clearly an act of spoliation...Abd-er Rahman I requested the Christians to sell him the other half. This they firmly refused to do, pointing out that if they did so they would not possess a single place of worship. Abd-er Rahman, however, insisted, and a bargain was struck by which the Christians ceded their cathedral.

In 2006, the former president of Cordoba’s Muslim community, Mandur Escudero, sent a letter to the Pope asking that Muslims be permitted to pray there. To demonstrate to the world that it was impossible for him to do so, he then prayed outside the Mezquita in the middle of the street.

Muslims in Spain are campaigning to be allowed to worship alongside Christians in Cordoba Cathedral -- formerly the Great Mosque of Cordoba...Cordoba's dazzling "mihrab" -- the sacred alcove from where Muslim prayer is lead -- still stands as a separate part of the site and is one of the main attractions for tourists.

Mansur Escudero, a Spanish convert to Islam, is leading the movement that is pushing for the right of Muslims to pray at the Cordoba Cathedral. "I don't think it's important for Muslims. I think it's important for humankind," Escudero says. "We think this is a beautiful paradigm of tolerance, knowledge, culture. People of different religions living together."...

In April [2010], more than one hundred Muslim visitors staged a protest by unrolling their prayer rugs inside the site and beginning to pray. When security tried to remove them, the protest got violent and two were arrested.

According to Cordoba's Bishop, Demetrio Fernandes, this incident shows it is impossible to share a house of worship. It would be like sharing a wife between two husbands, he told CNN.

"Would they be happy to do the same in any of their mosques?" he asked. "Absolutely not. Because I understand their religious feeling and they have to understand ours as well. The religious feeling is the deepest one in the human heart, so it is not possible to share."

So, why cannot that work for Jews, in Jerusalem, on the Temple Mount?I now have seen something else, that someone said:

it was important to counter the theory of clash of civilizations, which he said was fueled by the extreme wings on all sides. He called on participants to find ways to ensure that "the spirit of tolerance"...reaches all levels of society.

"Our dialogue, our spirit of tolerance has not trickled down yet to the street, to the communities, to the clubs, to the little guy on the street anywhere in the Muslim or Christian world," he said.

"We will have to find ways and means in order for this spirit...to be felt among the masses: that we have to live together, that Islam and Christianity and all other religions, including Judaism, all of them worship God and there are no reasons for confrontation, but reasons for mutual respect and tolerance."

this is not about winning a victory for one religion or the other. He said: "They pretend that we are trying to conquer the mosque again. That's not the intention at all. We want it to be a place where anyone -- whether Muslim, Christian or Jew -- can do his meditation or his internal way of worshipping, or praying or whatever he wants to call it."

If the above is true and a genuine expression of Islam, why not apply it to Jerusalem's Temple Mount?^

About Me

American born, my wife and I moved to Israel in 1970. We have lived at Shiloh together with our family since 1981. I was in the Betar youth movement in the US and UK. I have worked as a political aide to Members of Knesset and a Minister during 1981-1994, lectured at the Academy for National Studies 1977-1994, was director of Israel's Media Watch 1995-2000 and currently, I work at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. I was a guest media columnist on media affairs for The Jerusalem Post, op-ed contributor to various journals and for six years had a weekly media show on Arutz 7 radio. I serve as an unofficial spokesperson for the Jewish Communities in Judea & Samaria.